Thursday, July 3, 2014

My partner-in-crime Fenny (of Little Asian Sweatshop) and I have started a habit of dressing up in matching outfits at conventions we work, because we are total dorks and LOVE wearing thematically appropriate outfits. We both LOVE dressing up. It's one of the things that brought us together in the early years of our friendship, as we met through the cosplay culture of anime and comic conventions in the late 90's. We both lived in Maryland at the time and went to many conventions in the mid Atlantic, but only attended as cosplayers/fans as opposed to working. It was fun and crazy and we'd wear 3 different costumes a day and pose for pictures and party party party. And as a total goody-two-shoes all through my adolescent years, it was like going from Dawn Weiner to Party Monster over the span of a weekend. My John Hughes moment of the girl dressed for prom having the slow descent down the staircase to show how hot no one knew she was was for me coming down the hotel escalator at Katsucon '00 dressed in a vinyl catsuit as my childhood hero The Baroness from G.I.Joe. Random nerds threw themselves before me and pledged allegiance. Dudes ran up to their hotel rooms to find their Cobra tshirt they KNOW they packed. Friends that knew me didn't recognize me. I had so many people stop me for pictures it was like I was on the red carpet. It was bonkers.

My first cosplay- Pikachu at Otakon 1998.

Subsequent costumes followed.

During this time I was attending and then graduated from the Kubert School where I was studying to pursue my lifelong dream of being a comic book artist, so attending conventions suddenly shifted from being a fun place to hang out in a crazy outfit while blitzed out of your mind to a veritable job fair-meets-minefield full of potential coworkers, mentors and bosses. And there were the opinions my heroes- people whose creations I had been following since childhood to worry about. So thinking I could have my cake and eat it too, I would wear a costume and try to schlep my portfolio around to different creators for advice and editors for jobs. It didn't work out very well.

Dragon*Con 03 Fenny and I were 5th Element Stewardesses

Portfolio reviews on a convention floor are tough enough on their own, but add a vinyl catsuit and a water bottle full of not-so-secret vodka to the mix and you will become a very sweaty, anxious, distracting mess. It still hadn't occurred to me at the time to just say screw it and get my own table to sell my wares and share my work. Get people to come to me instead. Cuz yeah, walking around for portfolio reviews as a young artist is a soul-crushing experience. You're waiting in lines, during a busy show where a lot of people are around you having fun, only to have your best and brightest works be torn down within minutes by a tired, irritable corporate servant looking for someone worthy (ie: safe or a sure bet) of spending the company's money. Which was never me. So I would keep drawing my weird punk rock characters and pinup girls and work my cliche Generation X slacker jobs- barista at an internet cafe, courier, tv/stereo salesperson, Tower Records store artist (the BEST) and Hot Topic manager. And go to conventions where I'd sink a crazy amount of money into costumes that I'd wear for a few hours then never see again. It was ludicrous. I wish I could go back in time and shake myself until the connection of costumes, conventions and retail would light up in my dulled 20's brain sooner.

D*C 03, Fenny and I as poppy and mushroom fairies

I mean eventually it did happen, but I had to really get my life sorted before I had the courage to just put myself out there on an Artist Alley table. I had gone into a full depression in my life outside of conventions and was in an absolute rut personally and professionally. I suffered abuse, had my heart broken and made some really bad choices. Fortunately through a very tumultuous 2004-2007 I was able to get rid of my toxic friends (except Fenny of course, who's awesome), start dating my now-husband Phil Balsman and move to New York City to get an actual art/design related day job. These changes all had profound impacts on me. You can read all about that struggle HERE.

HOODIE OF SADNESS

As I was preparing to get my life together I started to take a step back from cosplay and started focusing more on the pinup aesthetic in both my art and my lifestyle. I also started getting attention for my art outside of the comic and convention culture via roller derby bout posters. I finally was starting to get recognition and realized I didn't necessarily need the approval of the editor reviewing portfolios. To be honest the lofty teenage pipedream of drawing X-Men as a monthly book kinda died years ago. I have friends from college who draw on monthly books. Once you see how a job like that can just grind you into the ground it looks a lot less appealing for a slacker like me. I'd much rather do a comic at my own pace. So instead my newfound artistic outlet of roller derby took me out of obscurity in the comic world and put me in the spotlight of the aging punk/tattoo/DIY/ counterculture, which is full of people all are trying to scrape by and figure out how to just get paid enough to survive doing the silly crap we love to do. This boost of confidence from an audience that was very receptive to my work was what I needed my first time selling at Baltimore Comic Con 2007, after I had moved to NYC the spring before. I was so afraid of failure I didn't tell anyone I was coming down for the show. I was terrified my toxic friends would show up and sabotage my hard work. All I had was prints and no other merch. It was very bare bones. I wore JEANS at the table and sat most of the time (which is UNHEARD of nowadays with me...). I don't remember how much I made or any real solid details but I do recall it being an overwhelmingly positive experience. Enough that I've been going to conventions in a professional capacity ever since. As I went to more and more shows I started using my sales and merchandising training from all my past retail jobs and started applying that to selling stuff I actually could stand behind with full confidence: my own artwork. Every convention is an exercise in trial-and-error, but they most
especially were those first 2-3 years. Awkward merch on precarious
displays. Too many things of stuff no one wants to buy. Overly
complicated signage. You learn something every show you go to. Even the
bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

My first table- Baltimore Comic Con 07. I had no idea what I was doing.

Around this time in my mid-late 20's I was coming into my own physically with quite a bit of a LADY shape. Surprising enough, for most it's a shock that I didn't always look the outrageously curvaceous way I do now. I was a very late bloomer. In 2004 I was going to hip-hop concerts and had no tattoos and was wearing knitted beanies in the summertime like a doofus. At one point I had a super corporate job where I forced myself to dress like a Sunday school teacher. I've gone through a lot of phases. I wasn't cosplaying at all by 2005, but me being me I needed an outlet to
wear what I want. Too many hoodies will depress a person. I missed
feeling and looking like a lady. I also had started getting to know about some other people in Baltimore (outside of the veritable noose that was my circle of friends at the time) via roller derby, and through friends-of-friends encountered Stacey Barich, founder of Atomic Cheesecake Studios. Fortunately through Stacey's photography studio I was introduced to pinup and midcentury fashion, and started incorporating nicer, more structured clothing into my wardrobe that was made to accentuate my body. I looked like a cartoon! I looked like MY cartoons!! But other than conventions, where can I even wear stuff like this and not get made fun of or harassed? Still living in suburban Maryland I didn't want to pull up at the fratty college bar and do a shooter in a tiny hat and corset. Or wear vintage fur and gloves to go over and pick up weed. Not having outlets for awesome outfits was driving me crazy. It wasn't until I moved to NYC that I felt comfortable dressing how I wanted to, because EVERYTHING in NYC is so crazy all the time that it's really not that big of a deal. I started going to events like burlesque shows and art openings where eccentric dress is actually rewarded with compliments and not with drunk rednecks screaming at you from across parking lots. NYC is truly a place where eccentrics like me can run free in their native habitat.

2008-2013's ensembles and costumes. A slippery slope indeed.

Once I started running my own tables and got a pleasant reception about my work, my confidence boosted. This might be a surprise to those of you who have met me in person, but I'm kinda socially awkward. Daresay a bit of a wallflower. At actual social events, I tend to stick to the sidelines. Without the visual aid of my artwork and merch, it's kinda hard to tell the average person what it is I do all day. I've watched people's eyes glaze over as I explain how I letter manga for my dayjob. That doesn't happen nearly as much at conventions I'm vending at. The Artist Alley table I stand behind and the silly outfits I wear are my sword and my shield. I've said before in a previous entry on here and I've said it a zillion times over since, I'm like one of those deep sea fish with the dangly light- I bring people to my table with my big, bright ensembles and sparkling personality then chomp down on them with the concept that I drew (and now SELL) all the artwork in front of me on the table. Some people are actually shocked. "You drew all this stuff?", they say. And it's like yeah, dude I frickin' hustle. As fun as this all is, it's still WORK. I'm my own booth babe. (I actually found a tshirt that says that.) Wearing outfits and getting dressed for conventions makes people happy to see me and that's a nice feeling. It's hard to be in a bad mood while wearing a fantastical outfit and surrounded by positivity and excitement. And especially with the more costumey-spin I've been doing with my convention outfits- it's a way to show my love for a character or property in my own way and on my own terms. Especially superheroes. Like I love both Wonder Woman and Power Girl. I see a lot of myself in them. But as much as I love them, I really don't want to run around with my ass hanging out. Hence why I made them both retro ensembles that evoke the character without having to wear a lycra jumpsuit. That's where being an artist comes in handy. Most of the characters I draw wear what I would wear. My art imitates my life and my life imitates my art. Those costumes (seen in the above collage) are literally items just hanging out in my closet. My Power Girl dress is my *wedding dress*! And then it just makes it awesomer to encounter people who really feel what I'm doing. If I'm gonna go through all the trouble of stepping away from my art and leaving the comfort of my house and getting myself hyped up to talk to people for hours upon hours with no break then goddammit I'm gonna at least look cute and make money. Haha.

So the original reason I wanted to post this! Fenny and I are dressing up as an evil 60's Cobra typing pool! It's like Mad Men-meets-G.I.Joe! It's basically all stuff from my closet!! Yay! So I'm dressing up of course as The Baroness (revisiting one of my 'classic cosplays') and Fenny is being the HR manager!

It's basically just me with a Cobra patch.

Fenny's gonna look ADORABLE.

Other outfits Fenny and I are doing:

The Monster's Mate (aka Phyllis Dyller) and Francesca from Mad Monster Party for Monster Mania in October